Lyn Ulbricht says that she and her husband have no doubt in their minds that their son is not Dread Pirate Roberts, the accused mastermind behind the original Silk Road website.

The underground drug website, which was shut down as part of a federal raid late last year, was only accessible through the anonymizing tool Tor. The government alleges that Ross Ulbricht, as Dread Pirate Roberts, "reaped commissions worth tens of millions of dollars” through his role as the site’s leader and also attempted to orchestrate six murders-for-hire.

Since Ross Ulbricht was arrested in October 2013, a new site also calling itself Silk Road has taken the original site's place and boasts a leader calling him or herself Dread Pirate Roberts—a handful of others have attempted to fill the void left by the first Silk Road. Dread Pirate Roberts is a reference to a character from the movie The Princess Bride. In the film, Roberts' persona is passed down among various people.

Initially, prosecutors detailed the first murder-for-hire that Ulbricht is suspected of plotting, which involved an undercover agent. A prosecutor's November 2013 letter to the court describes a second murder attempt, as well as an additional four attempts (for a grand total of six) that Ulbricht is accused of organizing. Like the second one, the government says that the four subsequent attempted hits were organized by Silk Road user “redandwhite,” a known nickname of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club, which the United States government considers a criminal enterprise.

The first attempted hit was against a dealer accused of cheating customers. The second attempt was against a Canadian Silk Road user named "friendlychemist," who claimed he had hacked into one of the computers of a major Silk Road dealer and obtained information on buyers. He threatened to release this unless Roberts paid up. Prosecutors say that redandwhite also informed Ulbricht of another Canadian user ("tony76") who was apparently running scams on the site. redandwhite recommended that tony76 and his three housemates also be eliminated.

However, neither the FBI nor Canadian authorities have a record of these alleged homicides taking place during that time. American prosecutors say evidence seized from Ulbricht's computer shows he believed that all six murders were carried out.

“He’s pleading not guilty and I believe that,” Lyn Ulbricht told Ars this week. “That goes for his father and his family. We believe in Ross.”

“I’m proud of him and I think he's an exceptionally fine person. I'm obviously quite distraught at these charges—I don't believe them.”

She continued, “He's not a genius, he's intelligent—he didn't pursue a Physics PhD because he said he couldn’t do that level of math. He's got a lot of wonderful qualities. He's very compassionate and a lover of life. Ross is a very positive person by nature. I think he's trying his best to to make the best out of a challenging situation. He has told me about trying to help out other inmates—he was tutoring one in math. He has been a peacemaker when things get agitated. He's well liked.”

In the name of “Internet Freedom”

The way that Lyn Ulbricht sees it, a conviction would not only damage her family, but the entire Internet itself.

“It's bigger than Ross,” Lyn Ulbricht told Ars this week. “It's not just about one person who is alleged to have committed a crime. It's going to set precedent. It's going to impact the Internet and other things in the 21st century. It's dealing with new laws and new territory of the law.”

The family’s efforts so far have drawn some support among the Bitcoin crowd—Brave New Books in Ulbricht's hometown of Austin, TX is donating 5 percent of its sales this month to support Ross’ legal defense efforts. But the Ulbricht defense team has not received the traditional support of Internet freedom advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Access, or other groups that have campaigned for Internet freedom vociferously in the past.

Further Reading

The government clearly doesn’t see it that way, noting that the Communications Decency Act is a civil rather than a criminal law, and it expressly does not impact criminal law. The law is designed to protect speech, not conduct, the government argues. Further, outside legal experts in computer criminal law say that Ulbricht’s argument that a conviction would impact the entire Internet is spurious.

“The Section 230 argument is frivolous, as Section 230 expressly says that it has no effect on the scope of federal criminal law,” Orin Kerr, a professor of law at George Washington University and one of the nation’s top scholars in the field, told Ars.

Kerr took the hypothetical example of Craigslist hosting an advertisement for a murder-for-hire.

“When Craigslist hosts an ad seeking to hire a hitman, no one thinks that the folks at Craigslist are hosting the website to try to facilitate murders,” he added. “In contrast, the claims with Silk Road is that Ulbricht not only knew about criminal activity on Silk Road, but actually wanted that activity to occur so he could profit from it.”

“Section 230 is completely inapplicable here”

Online, the FreeRoss.org website trumpets the Ulbricht family’s case, and suggests, without mentioning it specifically, that Ross should be granted Section 230 protection.

The family writes:

If Ulbricht is convicted, it opens the door for the censure and erosion of a free Internet. Under present law, website hosts are not held responsible for actions – legal and illegal – on their sites. This would be seriously undermined, as would the economic, cultural and intellectual benefits that a free Internet provides. ISPs could no longer host sites without fear of liability.

A US citizen’s constitutional rights are being violated with vague allegations that do not cite specific crimes, a violation of the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. If the government can misapply the law against Ulbricht, it can do it to any of us.

This case opens new legal territory and the government is poised to set Internet and financial law with it. Bad law could be ushered in and we would be forced to live with it.

This is precisely the message that the Ulbricht family is trying to get out.

Further Reading

“According the to government they're making him responsible for what people did on the site and this is unprecedented,” Lyn Ulbricht said. “Prior to this, no service provider has been made criminally liable that allows, according to Dratel, even promotes illegal activity. Having criminal charges aimed at a Web host is a new thing. That could put a foot in the door to prosecute Web hosts for what happens. Dratel points out that a lot of hosts know that there is a lot of illegal activity going on, they know that child porn or terrorist material is on the Internet.”

Section 230 is completely inapplicable here. As an initial matter, none of the charges at issue treat Ulbricht as the “publisher or speaker” of “content” posted by others on Silk Road. Ulbricht is not being prosecuted because Silk Road users said things on the site that were illegal. He is being prosecuted because Silk Road users did things on the site that were illegal—namely, selling drugs and malicious software—and because Ulbricht conspired with them in support of their activity. This is simply not a case about First Amendment activity, notwithstanding Ulbricht’s strained efforts to portray it as such.

Other legal scholars tend to take the government’s view.

“As to Section 230 of the CDA, it doesn't apply to criminal liability,” Susan Brenner, a law professor at Dayton University, told Ars. “Check out Section 230(e)(1), which specifically says the statute is not to be ‘construed to impair the enforcement of . . . any . . . Federal criminal statute.’ It only applies to civil suits.”

Chris Conley, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, pointed out that the difference between Silk Road and a site like Craigslist, which had allowed prostitution ads for many years, is that a substantial amount of Craigslist ads are not advertising obviously illegal services.

“At least as between Craigslist and Silk Road there’s an easy line to be drawn between running a site where you are aware that some illegal activity occurs but can’t prevent it without foreclosing other legitimate activity (and likely just routing the illegal bits to other parts of the site) and one where you actively encourage and relish in the illegal activity,” he told Ars by e-mail.

Toss ‘em all

Beyond the question of Section 230, the Ulbricht family’s public argument turns on a March 2014 Memorandum of Law motion, in which his attorney, Joshua Dratel, argued that all four counts against Ross Ulbricht be dismissed.

"For purposes of these motions, and because challenges to an Indictment on its face do not involve disputing the facts alleged therein, the conduct of the Silk Road and Dread Pirate Roberts will be attributed nominally to Mr. Ulbricht. However, of course, that does not in any way constitute an admission by him with respect to any allegation in the Indictment."

In short, Dratel argues that Ross Ulbricht is not Dread Pirate Roberts, and even if he were, the four charges brought against him should be tossed. Primarily, Dratel writes, the first three counts suffer from “similar, and fatal, defects,” including the fact that the laws under which the government is prosecuting Ulbricht were not intended for, nor have they ever been used against, a website operator.

Dratel also argues that Count Three accusing Ross Ulbricht of being in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—often referred to as an anti-hacking law—is misplaced. Because Ulbricht did not himself access a computer without authorization or exceed such authorization, he cannot possibly fall under this law.

As Dratel writes:

Merely offering for sale software that the purchaser and/or ultimate user might utilize to commit a crime cannot transfer that person’s intent – unknown to Mr. Ulbricht, not communicated to him, and perhaps not even manifested by the purchaser or seller at the time of the transaction on Silk Road – to Mr. Ulbricht for purposes of establishing the necessary mens rea to constitute a violation of 18 U.S.C. §1030(a)(2).

Finally, Dratel comes up with a creative argument against the money laundering count, saying that because bitcoins are not defined under American law as “funds” or a “monetary instrument,” (or at least they were not at the time of the alleged crimes), he couldn’t have possibly committed money laundering.

A man of the people

Lyn Ulbricht wouldn’t tell Ars much about what she knew about her son’s activities prior to the arrest, nor what she know about his political views.

“I don't know that I'm supposed to discuss a timeline,” she said. “I have nothing to hide but I've gotten so wary. I ask the lawyer everything.”

She said that prior to her son’s arrest, she’d never heard of Silk Road, much less Tor.

“I was never on the site, I’d never heard of the site,” she said. “I guess you could get unpasteurized milk on the site. It was a wide open site.”

Since Ross Ulbricht’s arrest, Lyn Ulbricht has spent a significant portion of her time campaigning on her son’s behalf. She and her husband, Kirk Ulbricht, have temporarily moved from their home in Texas to New York City, to be closer to Ross Ulbricht’s attorney, and to the Brooklyn prison where their son is being held. The couple continues to run a business building and renting vacation homes in the Costa Rican rainforest.

Further Reading

Lyn Ulbricht said that over the last several months she has learned all kinds of new things.

“I'm an older person who was not big in social media. I've never been on Twitter [before this]. Not to mention Tor—hello? All of this is a whole new territory. There's been a very steep learning curve involved. This is not something I necessarily would have chosen. There's been a tremendous amount of energy involved. Happily there's been people who have helped us with the website and that's been a godsend.”

Ross’ mother added that she and other family members visit him once a week in prison for one hour. When he was held briefly in Oakland, California, and early on in New York, he could only visit with his family through a two-way telephone call mediated by a large glass panel.

“But happily he is now in a situation where it's a big meeting room with other inmates and we sit at a long table, we can hug him and hold his hand,” she said. “We're right there across from him. They've not allowed him to have e-mail like other prisoners do. I wish he did. He can write us letters and we can too. We can’t call him but he can call us.”

So what’s next for the man who was temporarily leading a yoga class from prison?

“Ross is supposed to be able to participate in discovery and he goes over it—that's been ordered by the court to happen but he has not been provided with a laptop to read the evidence,” Lyn Ulbricht noted. “He has to have the technology to read what they submit. It's apparently 4.5 terabytes. We have a lot to work through.”

Presuming that he doesn’t strike a plea deal beforehand, the Ulbricht trial is set to begin in a New York federal courtroom on November 3, 2014.

But other legal experts are convinced that the government will prosecute the case as hard as possible.

“There's some compelling facts that the government has, to show that he is DPR. It will be up to [Ulbricht] and his lawyer to decide if the government has enough. I bet you that all the [lieutenants] are going to testify against him. If [the government] wants to make a point and is going to make an example, then they're not going to give him anything.”